Well, I’ve asked before and I am still working on getting a solid list down, but I need to ask again.  This here is a pretty solid community of bloggers and I need to know who you want to see blogging.  What artists, Christian or otherwise, do you want to see blogging?  I have some ideas of how to make this community a pretty powerful voice in the music industry, but I need to make sure I have all of your opinions.

Last time we did this there were some great answers and I think Derek Webb, Crowder and Jon Foreman were at the top of the list.  Did that change?  Let’s hear it.

So we got pretty much a lot of the same answers on the first post, but there were a few good points, pointed out by some folks. Now, first I would like to point out that I am not suggesting that we throw out Myspace all together. From a marketing end that would be stupid. I realize that it’s something that has to exist, but I still hold to what I say in that an artists Myspace page needs to point to something that doesn’t suck. We all (mostly) agree that Myspace sucks, but I think all of us see the usefulness of it.

If we all agree that it sucks, but has to be there, why not have that point to something that doesn’t suck. Shaun made some great points in the comment section about spreading yourself out there enough that no matter what avenue people are on there is a way to find you. That’s an obvious good call. Tim also made some good points about the reach of Myspace over anything else out there. But again, why spend the time, where there could be a giant button that directs the reader to something more personal and that, again, doesn’t suck?

Dale over at IdeaDen is neck deep in artists online presence and rebutted with this post, which also states that while Myspace sucks, it also may “rule”. Dale writes:

It allows people to modify….er eh…destroy their profiles and make their site look more like a drunken programmers product after a Mountain Dew shortage. Despite all of its shortcomings, one thing remains true…if you want to find out about music and connect to the bazzzillllions of people looking for it…then Myspace is king.

Well written and true. As sad as that is. I think my big question is, What Next? What happens when Facebook is the “kind of sucks, kind of rules” thing and we are on to bigger and better? How many artists are leaving behind too many un-updated sites that are causing more confusion for their career than it is helping it? Do they need to hire someone full-time simply to make sure all of these social networking things are consistent? Or do all of these places simply point to one consistent place, and that being the “.com”?

Just thoughts. Thanks for all the input. What do you guys think?

I have talked to a lot of people in the past month or so about bands web presence and sooner or later during the conversation these few sentences are spoken:

Me: “What do you think of your Myspace page?”
Random Artist (Popular or Not): “Myspace sucks, I hate it.”

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard those words in the past month or two and how many times I have had to hold my tongue from saying, “I freaking told you”. Myspace is on it’s way out, but there are still so many artists using it. Why? Because they have to. They have to until it fades away and becomes another un-updated useless site and then eventually redirects them somewhere else.

Remember a year ago when a common question was “Are you on Myspace?” or “I will just look you up on Myspace” was a phrase coupled with saying goodbye. Now those words are replaced with two simple words. “Myspace Sucks”. Which I guess was sort of three words before something altered the english language.

I understand that there are artists that still need to use it, and it will be around for a long time, but guess what? Facebook will do the same thing in six months. So will Virb, and yes, Carlos, so will Twitter. One thing that isn’t going anywhere is the internet. That (I have a hunch) will be around for a while. Along with all of these social networking things disappearing so will easy to remember domain names, and almost every “.com” that you can think of. There’s really nothing we can do about the “.com” thing for bands, until someone invents a “.band” and that is strictly for musicians. (Don’t steal the idea, I need that to pay for my kids college.)

What I am tying to say is that eventually people will need their “.com” to be a central point for all things social networking. That will become the hub of everything online and it should be. That’s where people will look for you. That’s where Google will look for you. So why not be there? And along with that, why not make that the most reliable place to learn about you on the web? Sounds obvious doesn’t it? Yet hundreds of artists are spending time and energy on a Myspace page, that if you didn’t notice today, will have problems that you can’t fix.

I spend a lot of time checking out the “web presence” of all of the artists that I am working with, which unfortunately means sitting there waiting for their Myspace page to load. Today I was checking one of the artists pages and noticed that the “Shows” part of the page was all out of order and repeated over and over several times making the page unbelievably long. I scrolled and scrolled to get to the bottom and ten minutes later I made it. I shook my head, looked at several other artists with the same problem, and went to some other page. Once again, confusion that can be avoided and issues that can’t be fixed when someone else is in charge of your info.

So what do you think? Myspace still cool or suck? I think I know the answer, but lets talk it out.